


pretend there is no kryptonite

by tenderjock



Series: how long have you been - this [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - andy gets thrown into the ocean instead of quynh, Gen, the main focal point of the story is quynh but theres a lot of the others as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26698828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderjock/pseuds/tenderjock
Summary: “Her name was Andromache,” Nicky said. “She was the first of us, of all of us.”
Relationships: Old Guard - team, background Joe/Nicky - Relationship, minor yet vital Quynh/Andy
Series: how long have you been - this [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1982701
Comments: 28
Kudos: 144





	pretend there is no kryptonite

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to @hauntedjaeger (saellys) / @hauntedfalcon on tumblr for listening to me scream about this fic. basically what it says on the tin. title from "fifteen ways to stay alive" by daphne gottlieb.

“Realize that this love was not your trainwreck, was not the truck that flattened you, was not your Waterloo, did not cause massive hemorrhaging from a rusty knife.  **That love is still to come** .” - _ Fifteen Ways to Stay Alive,  _ Daphne Gottlieb

: :

When they found Quynh, she was huddled in the corner of her cell. She didn’t look up when Nico called her name. She had curled into a sort of upright ball, perched on the toes of her feet, head bowed to her knees. Her hands were clasped over her forehead in a mockery of prayer. The only movement in the cell was the rustle of rats in the straw floor.

Nico and Yusuf exchanged glances, tossed a mental coin. Yusuf lost. He crept forward, as quickly as he dared. The guard that they had slain outside the cell door wouldn’t go unfound for long. They needed to get out of here, now.

Yusuf put a hand to the curve of Quynh’s spine. She went stiff, suddenly, then relaxed.

“You came,” she said, raising her face to his. Her face was grimy and marred by blood and tear tracks. “It’s too late.”

“What do you mean,  _ too late, _ ” Yusuf said, a horrible certainty rising in his chest. “Quynh, where’s Andromache?”

Quynh was silent for a long moment. Her eyes were fixed on a point that Yusuf couldn’t see, somewhere in the middle distance. Slowly at first, then with abrupt emotion, her face twisted.

Nico made a sound like he’d been gut punched. “No,” he said. Yusuf didn’t need to see the look on his face; he saw the look on Quynh’s face, instead. Despair was the wrong word for it; so was fury. She looked like the last stars had fallen to Earth. She looked defeated.

But someone needed to get them out of here, and that someone was Yusuf. He knelt, took the heavy iron key to the manacles from Nico, and uncuffed Quynh. She had rocked back onto her haunches and was staring blankly out in front of her. Yusuf slid an arm around her waist and slung her over his shoulder. It was easier to do than he expected. Twelve weeks of starvation may have not killed her, at least not permanently, but it certainly lightened his load.

Nico was praying, gentle  _ Ave Maria, gratia plena _ , while Yusuf helped Quynh mount up. They had only brought two horses, figuring that Quynh and Andromache could ride pillion. Quynh’s hands were clumsy with hunger, exhaustion, and fear, but she gripped Yusuf’s shoulders firmly enough.

They kicked their mounts into a steady canter and rode in silence. About two miles out, they heard the church bells ringing frantically. Quynh shuddered, and squeezed Yusuf tighter.

Audible only as the jangle of tack and a soft  _ et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus,  _ Nico rode behind them. Quynh trembled, just the slightest bit, just enough that a person would notice if they were pressed up against her. Without looking, Yusuf reached down and covered her hand with his.

With bells tolling their sorrow, the remaining three rode through the night until dawn. Right around when the morning sky began to turn pink, Quynh rested her head in the spot between Yusuf’s shoulder blades. He flicked the reins and tried to pretend he didn’t notice the wetness staining the back of his shirt.

They watched the sun kiss the sky from a cave in the hills. Quynh washed her face mechanically, changed into the suit of clothes they had brought her, and ate some bread and cheese and olives. All three of them flinched when the clothes they had brought for Andromache fell out of Nico’s pack. None of them addressed the issue of the labrys, hung from Yusuf’s saddle.

Yusuf went outside to watch for intruders, but more importantly, watch the sky change from pearl gray to vibrant blue. It was a beautiful day to lose a loved one.

Nico joined him after about an hour. They stood shoulder to shoulder, and Yusuf leaned into that echo of a touch. Nico caught his hand and squeezed.

“She’s alive,” Nico said. Yusuf looked at him. Nico was frowning, the way he did when he was trying to work out a particularly hard sound in English. “Alive last time Quynh saw her. They took her away – she heard one of the guards say they brought her out to sea and threw her in like so much trash. But she’s alive.”

Yusuf’s stomach didn’t know what to do with the news. “She’s alive –” he said, voice coming out hoarse with the tears he hadn’t shed. “If she’s alive, that means we can find her.”

Nico just looked at him, something like pity on his face. Yusuf leaned out of his soft touch and dropped Nico’s hand.

“She’s at the ocean floor,” Nico said, with that exquisite kindness of his. Yusuf had never hated him as much as he hates him right now, not even when they were on opposite sides of a holy war. “We don’t know where, we don’t have a ship –”

“We can’t  _ leave her there _ ,” Yusuf snapped. Nico sighed, and looked out at the morning sky. A covey of pigeons fluttered into view, and then back out of it, into the trees. Yusuf opened his mouth to say something, closed it again. He turned and went back in the cave, ugly hope twisting until it fit the dull reality of things: Nico was right, damn him.

Quynh was stoking the fire. It was a little smoky in the cave, but she didn’t seem to mind. She looked up and smiled at Yusuf; it was a shaky smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“ Good morning ,” she said, with that shaky smile. She sat down, then rearranged her legs so they were crossed in front of her.

“We need to find her,” Yusuf said.

Quynh tucked her chin down to her collarbone. “Yes,” she said. “But not today.” When Yusuf opened his mouth to argue, she raised a hand. “We’re in enemy territory and we’re being hunted. We’re outnumbered ten to one, and I don’t want to lose any more of Che’s soldiers. Andromache has endured many things. She can endure this for a short while.”

Yusuf wanted to argue. The urge to run out of the cave, throw himself on his horse, and search every dock for the whore’s sons that did this to Andromache was almost overwhelming. Instead, he sat down next to Quynh and stared into the little smoky fire.

“Was she –” Yusuf started, and then realized he didn’t have an end to that question.  _ Was she scared, _ maybe, as impossible as it seemed for Andromache the Scythian, goddess of the Sakae, warrior of the ages, to be scared. Instead of asking, he reached out and held his hand over the fire until his fingers were on the edge of burning. Quynh made a small sound, caught his wrist to pull him out of harm’s way.

She stood up, brushed dirt and dried leaves off of her skirt. In the dancing light of the fire, backlit by the new day’s sun, Quynh’s face was in shadow. Yusuf looked up at her all the same.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “You and Nico will go into town and discover what ship Che was taken on. Use any means necessary. This is not the time to tip-toe around.”

Before Yusuf could answer, Quynh turned away and bent down to grasp something from Yusuf’s saddlebags. It was Andromache’s labrys.

Quynh unsheathed the labrys and held it up to catch the light. It gleamed in a broken circle, sending bright reflections dancing around the cave.

“Tomorrow,” she said again, “we go to work.” The labrys swung in a sudden arc, slicing neatly into the pile of firewood Nico had gathered. Quynh turned and left the cave, leaving Yusuf to watch her go. Her back was straight, but her hands were shuddering fists. Yusuf tore his gaze away from her silhouetted form in the mouth of the cave, and returned to the fire, burning bright and burning hot, and no more than a quarter as dangerous as Quynh when she had her mind set on something.

_ Tomorrow,  _ he thinks to himself, and swallows down the urge to put his hand back to the flames. He tries not to think of Andromache, breathing sea water in a metal coffin. They’ll find her, soon enough.

: :

It was a chill night in 1812 when Nico had the dream, his second series of such dreams. A man, dressed in Napoleon’s colors. The gnawing hole of hunger, deep in his belly, the way his limbs grew weak as the days wore on. Frost formed little crystals on his boots and bayonet, on his ragged blanket, on his eyelashes. But the hunger: that was the one constant, until he slipped into sleep one night and stopped breathing, stopped shivering from cold and aching with battle bruises.

He woke up, and was still hungry and cold and fatigued. But he woke up. Not all soldiers did.

Nico jerked back into consciousness with a start. Joseph was awake, too, already pulling out his sketchbook and a piece of charcoal.

“French,” Quynh said. She was silent for a while. Then: “In Russia. Smolensk, I think.”

“What did you see?” Joseph asked, casting a glance at Nico. His clever hands shaded a scruff of beard onto a half-visible face.

“A man,” Nico said. “Starving. Desperate. Gray eyes – or maybe green? Tall. There was a book he was reading –  _ Les Trois Mousquetaires _ .”

“He was fighting with Napoleon,” Joseph said, still drawing as he talked. “Guess we have to go back to Europe after all, boss.”

They rode their horses hard, and traded in their mounts at frequent intervals. They didn’t sleep, or they slept in the saddle. It still took nearly two months to find Sebastien.

In the grand scheme of things, two months was a flicker of time. It took Quynh and Andromache nearly a decade to find Nico and Joseph. Of course, they were not alone. Nico twisted around to look at Joseph, who was dozing sitting up. They had never been alone. He thanks his God, and Joseph’s God, too, for that, every day.

Their dreams had become increasingly vivid for the past several weeks. Nico has learnt the feel of a rough rope around his neck, the way his bowels empty when his own weight finally pulls him into a stranglehold. The dreams had gotten more vivid, and Quynh didn’t mention it but she started to push their horses harder as the days of travel drag on.

Sebastien was dangling by the neck from a makeshift gallows when they got to him. Quynh stood in her saddle and cut the rope cleanly with Che’s labrys. He crumpled to the ground, then sputtered back to life, bound hands coming up to his throat, pulling at the noose.

Nico swung off his horse to help. Between the two of them, they managed to get the noose off of Sebastien’s neck. He immediately retched, only missing Nico because Joseph pulled him back at the last second. Just bile came up.

The three of them considered Sebastien for a long moment while he lay on the ground. He rolled over onto his back and considered them right back.

Sebastien cleared his throat. “Do you have any food?” he asked.

Quynh laughed, honest to God laughed. “Come with us, soldier,” she said. “We’ll feed you.”

He glanced down the road, at where – Nico presumed – the French army had gone when they left him for dead. The fields around them were razed to the ground. He didn’t have much choice, and his cocked eyebrow seemed to suggest that.

Quynh was still sitting on her horse. She regarded the three of them something like a queen to her vassals, Nico thought, then blinked. The moment was gone. She was just Quynh again, with her sleek hair and expansive hat collection and truly impressive grasp of languages.

“What’s your name?” she asked. Sebastien told her, and then Joseph offered him a change of clothes and a handful of dried dates, which he basically inhaled. Their horses were spent, so they huddled around the fire Nico had managed to build. Sebastien took turns roasting his face and his back, and ate all the food that they gave him.

He didn’t ask. It burned Nico, that he didn’t ask. But it wasn’t until he had eaten all of Joseph’s dates that he looked around at them and said, “Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?”

Quynh moved closer to the fire. “We are immortal,” she said. “We have been, for centuries. You’re the newest.”

Sebastien tilted his head back. After a pause, his hand came up to his throat, a mockery of his latest death. “Immortal,” he said. Then: “Christ.”

“I don’t think he had anything to do with it,” Joseph said. Nico tapped him on the shoulder, then shook his head when Joseph looked at him.  _ Not the right moment, amore _ , he wanted to say, but didn’t.

Sebastien ate their food and drank their brandy, and then said, after wiping his mouth, “Ah. I can’t come with you.”

Nico glanced at Joseph, who was still looking at Sebastien. There’s a wrinkle in his brow, the kind that Nico loved to kiss away. He didn’t say anything.

Nico said it instead. “Where will you go, if not with us?” he asked. “We look after each other, we fight together, we live together. We’re a family –”

“I already have a family,” Sebastien said, rather sharp. “And I’ve seen more than enough fighting, I think, for this lifetime.”

“What about your next lifetime?” Quynh asked. It’s the first thing she’s said since she told Sebastien that they were beyond death. She had been watching him with a considering tilt to her head. That tilt grew more exaggerated when Sebastien looked at her.

“I have a family,” Sebastien repeated. “My wife, my sons – they need me. I was never supposed to be here anyway, fighting this godforsaken war.”

“Most wars are godforsaken,” Joseph said. When everyone looked at him, he just shrugged, expansive and expressive.

“Alright,” Quynh said, after a moment of silence only broken by the crackle of their fire. “We will take you to your family, and you can stay with them as long as you can.”

Sebastien’s head cocked to the side. For just a moment there, he was a mirror of Quynh, Nico thought. “As long as I can?”

Quynh prodded the fire with a stick. Then, softly: “When they age and you don’t, or when they die and you can’t, you will return to us. It’s happened before. It will happen again.” Quynh’s face was stony. Nico didn’t know her backstory – only Andromache knew who Quynh was before she was _Quynh_ , but he did know that her past was broken and bloody and so, so lonely.

Nico glanced at Joseph again and sent up, once again, the quickest of prayers in gratitude for this man.

But Sebastien was many things, and one of them was French. He insisted on returning to Marseille, to his wife and two sons, and insisted that it would work out. He seemed to think his immortality was a gift from God. Joseph started several arguments with him on the topic, during their comparatively leisurely ride back south to France. Nico had been prepared to step in to moderate those discussions, but soon realized that Sebastien was enjoying himself just as much as Joseph.

Quynh watched Sebastien, a lot. She hadn’t spoken to Nico about her misgivings, or to Joseph, as far as he knew, but he could tell that she definitely had doubts regarding Sebastien’s family.

When they arrived in Marseille, it was just before Christmas. It’s chilly, although there’s no snow on the ground. Nico’s never been to Marseille, so he didn’t know if that’s unusual or not.

They stopped on the outskirts of the city. Quynh drew her horse up and said to Sebastien, “We’ll leave you here.” Her tone brooks no argument. She hands him something – the book he was reading in their dream, and a slip of paper sticking out of the top like a bookmark. It had an address written on it. Sebastien took the book, running his fingers over the spine like it was a loved one.

“Go to this address, when you want to find us again,” Quynh said. Sebastien nodded, without looking up. There’s an instant of awkward silence, which Joseph broke by kicking Sebastien’s leg lightly. His horse skittered a little bit, and the tension in all their shoulders faded.

“God bless, Sebastien,” Nico said. Joseph nodded. Quynh waved, eyes unreadable, then tugged her horse around and kicked it into a trot. Nico and Joseph followed. As they left, Joseph turned back to look at Sebastien, still sitting on his horse in the middle of the road at dawn, watching them go.

(And Nico has no way of knowing this, but that night Sebastien fell in bed beside his beautiful wife and dreamed of Andromache, gasping, choking, drowning, arms pinned to her sides and oxygen fleeing from her lungs as she laid on the ocean’s floor somewhere off the coast of England.

Louise le Livre shook her husband awake and asked what was wrong. He looked at her, eyes wild, and said the first of many lies he would tell her in the coming years: “I’m fine, darling. Just a bad dream.”)

: :

The new one didn’t sleep quiet.

It’s just about dawn when she rocketed up in her makeshift bed, a half-scream bursting from her lips. Booker, in the midst of what’s probably the same dream, jerked upright, scrabbling for a weapon. It took him a moment of disorientation before he remembered that he was not anchored to the ocean floor, unable to breath. He exhaled, and sank back into his pile of bedding.

Nicky and Joe hadn’t quite caught on yet. Nicky was brandishing a gun and Joe was trying to untangle himself from Nicky. Quynh, who hadn’t gone to bed with the rest of them, roared into the room, fists raised.

“Sorry,” Nile gasped. She sat up and put her head between her knees. “Bad dream.”

The rest of them looked around at each other. Joe’s got a hand to his mouth, that look he got when he had a hunch that he didn’t want to prove true. Booker fumbled for his flask.

It’s Nicky who said it, though: “Tell us?”

“It was a woman,” Nile said. She still hadn’t lifted her head from her knees. “Locked in an iron coffin under the sea. She kept drowning and coming back to life. Drowning, and screaming, like something furious and insane. She couldn’t move.  _ I  _ couldn’t move.”

Booker took a swig of whisky and studiously avoided meeting anyone else’s eyes.

“Her name was Andromache,” Nicky said. “She was the first of us, of all of us.”

Booker looked up at that. Joe was staring at Nile, eyes glassy; Nicky was looking down at his folded hands, shaking his head. Quynh –

She was looking straight at Booker, a hard twist to her mouth. Booker’s stomach wrenched, and he looked away. Had another drink.

Joe was explaining to Nile, who consumed it all with wide eyes. “It was her and Quynh, together, for the longest time. Before me and Nicky, it was the two of them.”

Against the recrimination in Quynh’s steady gaze, Booker had nothing to offer. He hadn’t spoken of his dreams of Andromache in nearly a hundred years. It happened. He dreamt of it. There was nothing they could do about it, and bringing it up just upset everyone. He drank some more whisky and coughed, a little, at the alcohol burn.

Christ, but Nile was young, and new, and didn’t deserve this. Not that Nicky or Joe or, God, Quynh deserved this, either, but – he didn’t know. Copley had asked for their address, which Booker had cautiously provided. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it didn’t mean anything good.

“She was a raging lioness in a fight,” Joe said softly, a thoughtful look on his face. Thoughtful, and quietly pained, like remembering something that left a deep bruise.

“We were in England,” Quynh said. Her voice was quiet, but not soft. At the words, all four of them looked up to her, standing above where they were lying on the floor. She tilted her head towards Nile. “We were accused of witchcraft, and hung, and when we didn’t die, well –”

“It proved their point,” Nile said, slow realization dawning on her face. Christ.

“They took her,” Quynh said, and paused. After several seconds, it became clear that she wasn’t going to say more on the subject. Nile looked around at them all, something painfully young on her face.  _ Ah, _ Booker thought. She was coming to appreciate that there were downsides to immortality. He would take another drink, but his flask was empty. At least now he was riding the edge of an unsteady buzz.

“We spent decades searching for her,” Nicky said. He was lacing and unlacing his fingers together.

“You blame yourself,” Nile said, turning her face up towards Quynh. “But you couldn’t have done anything.”

“I lost Che,” Quynh said. Her eyes were hard. “It should have been me. She was our leader, our original general. I’ve led her army for the past five centuries, but that’s all I’ve been doing. It was always hers.”

She turned, grabbed the labrys from where it was sitting on the table, and stalked out of the church doors. Nile looked around, catching Booker’s eye for a moment. Booker didn’t know what his face was doing, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t anything good.

Nile followed Quynh out. The three men watched her go, silent.

“So,” Joe said, rubbing his face. “Want to watch the game, Booker?”

: :

It’s one in a long line of sleepless nights. Nile, feeling sick from her talk with Booker, went outside to find Quynh. She was sitting on the hood of the car, trench coat tucked around her, smoking. Nile only noticed the bulge of a handgun on her hip because she was looking for it.

“Here,” Quynh said, and handed her something.

“You got my phone,” Nile said, taking it. She looked down at the lockscreen background, then immediately looked away. Something hot and aching welled up in her chest.

“Your family?” Quynh asked. Nile nodded.

“Booker said to me –” Nile started, then stopped. She wasn’t sure how to end that sentence.

“Booker says a lot of things,” Quynh said. Then, almost dreamy: “I forgot about her.” She didn’t clarify who ‘her’ meant, but Nile remembered the wild horror of the drowning woman all the same. Quynh’s looking off into the distance at some point that Nile can’t see. “I forgot about her, and I left her to rot. To drown. Like she was just some trash.” Her mouth twisted angrily as she said it, like she was quoting somebody.

Nile looked back at her phone, the picture of Mom and Duke. “I can’t leave them behind,” Nile said. Her voice broke on  _ them _ . She cleared her throat and blinked several times.

“It won’t help, to see them again,” Quynh said, quiet but firm. “It didn’t help me, it didn’t help Booker.”

“This is different,” Nile insisted. “I still have  _ years _ before they realize that I’m – I’m immortal. I could have years with them.”

“Draw it out,” Quynh said, “or cut it short. It’s up to you, but in the end, in a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years, it’s going to be the same.”

“This is different,” Nile said again. “This is my family.”

“We’re your family now. And we will never turn on you. Family is all we are.” Quynh turned back to the sunrise. “I thought we were an army, but we’re not. That’s the sort of thinking that got Che to the bottom of the ocean.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Nile said. She’s not sure why she said it. She’s not sure what she thinks she owes this woman, other than honesty. Quynh’s face is drawn, her hands tight fists. She looks – defeated. And something in Nile hates to see that look on her face.

“I broke a promise,” Quynh said, soft but not gentle. “Just you and me.” She seemed to have forgotten that Nile was even there, talking to the horizon. “Until the end.”

Quynh got up suddenly, stubbed her cigarette out. “Here,” she said, drawing a set of keys from her pocket. “Do you know how to ride a motorcycle?” Nile shook her head. “Well, you’re about to learn. There’s one in the inside, under a tarp. Take this –” Quynh handed her the pistol “– and get back to your family. We’ll wait for you.”

Nile took the pistol but hesitated over the motorcycle keys. “How will we contact each other?” she asked. “When – well. In case I need to.”

The corner of Quynh’s mouth quirked. “I have your phone number. Don’t worry. We always find each other.” That same corner of her mouth twisted down into a frown.

So Nile took her pack and got the motorcycle out from under its dusty tarp. Booker looked up when she walked in, but didn’t say anything. There was something understanding in his face; Nile looked away. Somehow, the kindness of these people was worse than the brutality.

One terrifying ride later, she was at the first vehicle checkpoint. She went to ditch the weapons, only to realize –

Wait – why would the clip be empty?

In her mind’s eye, Nile saw Booker cleaning and loading all their weapons, which were spread out on the floor before him. He handed the pistol to Quynh, who slid it into her thigh holster, strapped high enough on her leg that the trench coat she was wearing covered it.  _ You good, boss? _ he asked, hands going to the next piece.  _ Better now, _ Quynh said, and they both laughed.

“Fuck,” Nile said, “Quynh.”

It took all of twenty minutes to Google Copley’s address. And wasn’t that just another point against Booker? Nile found Copley’s wife’s obituary in the local paper, and from there traced him to a house outside of London, based on the address given for the wake. Another terrifying motorcycle ride later, and she was at Copley’s place, armed with a gun with no bullets and whatever wits she had left.

Copley was sitting on the floor of his very modern, very open design living room. They saw each other at the exact same moment. Copley dived for the gun; Nile kicked it out of the way, then stooped to pick it up, keeping her empty pistol trained on Copley.

He held his hands up. “Who are you?” he asked, raised hands bloody, and Nile steeled up her nerve and shot herself in the foot.

“Son of a bitch!” she ground out. The hole in her foot was healed in a matter of seconds, but it still hurt.

“You’re another one,” he said, and sat back down on the floor.

“What happened?” she asked. Now that she had a chance to look around the room, what she saw wasn’t particularly promising. The couch was overturned and covered in blood. Two windows were broken. Shell casings littered the floor. And beyond that, there was a series of corkboards, assembled in the main open area of the room.

_ 1918 – Q saves entire family in Germany _

_ 1973 – Joe and Nicky rescue political dissidents from stadium _

_ 1938 – Booker fights with the Basque _

Nile lowered her gun without realizing it. On the floor behind her, Copley let out a shaky sigh. “It’s their work,” he said. “It’s what they’ve done, for the past several decades. I don’t have information on all of their lives, but it’s – well, it’s enough, I think.”

“Quynh thinks she’s just fighting for Andromache,” Nile murmured to herself. “She thinks she’s leading her army because it’s what she would have wanted, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

She turned to Copley, trained the semi-automatic at him. “What happened here?” she said, trying to layer steel into her voice like Quynh did. His hands, which were resting on his knees, came back up.

“Booker and Quynh came here,” he said. “Quynh shot Booker – the blood,” gesturing to the couch, “and then Merrick’s men came in. It took seven of them to subdue her. Now they’re being tested. Tortured.”

“You knew what they did,” Nile said, rage welling up in her throat. “You knew what they did, and you sold them out anyway?” Quynh was right about one thing: they were her family now. And nobody fucked with a Freeman’s family.

“My wife – she couldn’t speak, at the end. She couldn’t breathe. It’s was supposed to be a gift,” Copley said. Nile lowered the gun.

“It wasn’t your gift to give,” she said, then: “Get up. We’re going to help them.”

She got Copley to leave the car and go. For all of her anger at the man, it wasn’t his battle to fight. Or if it was, it wasn’t his battle to win. Nile rolled her neck out in the elevator to the lab. This was going to mean one hell of a shoot-out.

When she finally got to the lab, she was stopped short by the sight of all four of them strapped to medical tables. Nicky and Joe were shirtless; Quynh and Booker were covered in blood, but seemed generally unharmed.

“Nile,” Booker said, like he was surprised to see her.

“Look out!” Nicky said, and Nile turned and backhanded the doctor before she could stab Nile with a syringe.

She went to Quynh first. The other woman was quivering with pent up rage. Neither of them looked at Booker until Joe said, “Leave him behind, he’s nothing but a traitor,” and Quynh snapped something in Arabic that shut him up.

In English, she added, “I am getting all of you out of here. Whatever it takes.”

_ Whatever it takes _ is what Nile was thinking as she threw herself and Merrick out the penthouse window, or, at least, what she would have been thinking if not for the sheer unmitigated terror of the fall.

They end up in a pub in London. The four of them sat down and discussed Booker, who was sadly drinking while sadly looking out at the Thames. As views go, it was pretty shitty. Nile pushed back from her seat and went to join him outside.

“They’re still deciding,” Nile said. When they do decide, she’s not the one to break the news to him; that dubious honor goes to Quynh. But Nile was still standing there, watching him swallow and nod, fingers turning a river stone over and over in his hand, when Quynh said  _ five hundred years _ .

It’s harsh. It’s harsher than Nile wanted it to be, but it’s what they agreed on. She still thought that the solution to Booker’s loneliness was not five more centuries of enforced loneliness, but she conceded to the others’ lived experiences.

Still, it left a hard knot in the pit of her stomach. It’s not until they go to Copley’s, and look at his fancy little corkboards, Quynh tracing the edge of a picture here and there with her fingertips, that Nile starts to relax. She’s given up her first family, her true family, but she’s found another family, and maybe that’s okay.

“Let’s get to work,” Quynh said, and they do.

: :

It’s six months after his sentence started, and Booker was as drunk as a person can be at 6 am, which is, in his book, very drunk. He watched the sunrise from a park in Paris and felt – something. He’s drunk too much to really be in command of his emotions at the moment.

He’s not drunk enough that he doesn’t notice that his door is unlocked. He dropped the bottle, glass shattering everywhere, and walked in the door with his gun drawn.

“Hello, Booker,” the woman standing at his kitchen table said. She was dressed simply in jeans and a black tank, but she wore the charisma of a top general. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said, and she laughed.

Booker, gun trained on her, hesitated, a confusion that wasn’t all just drunkenness settling over him. That was all the opportunity she needed. The woman neatly disarmed him and struck him in the temple with his own gun. He crumpled to the floor. Sideways, from the ground, he saw her slide the gun into the back of her pants and twist out her neck.

“C’mon, Book,” Andromache the Scythian said, dropping to one knee next to him. “Let’s have some fun.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm tenderjock on tumblr as well, so feel free to hmu.


End file.
